Bakelite Radio - Volume Three

Joe Camilleri's music embraces the heart and soul of R & B bypassing decades of styles and fads and recording methods.

Track Listing

1. Midnight Rain

2. Moonlight Kiss

3. Sugarbelle Blue

4. Ninety Eight Degrees

5. Blue Car

6. Get Hip

7. Sexuality

8. Worlds Away

9. Homework

10. Right on In the Darkness

11. You Belong To Me

12. Comfort Me

13. Hell Cat Blues

14. Brother Moses and Sister May

15. Mystery Ship

16. End of the Line

Click on above buttons to hear samples from select tracks

More info & Reviews

Exactly what’s happening between the grooves of this disc, Joe Camilleri can’t or won’t say. Listen, though, and it’s as close and as real as your pulse. There’s a warmth, an intimacy, an ardour that seems to bypass decades of styles and fads and recording methods to embrace the heart and soul of R&B. That’s Rhythm and Blues, if you came in late. The meaning has changed a few times, but never for Joe, regardless of whether he’s steering Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, the Black Sorrows or Bakelite Radio. As the world gets slicker at programming click tracks and loading sound files, here’s one guy still kicking back, counting in and cutting sides. With Volume III, he’s never sounded more intoxicated by the pure spirit of music; never sounded closer to home.

"It’s old fashioned music, played in an old fashioned kinda away," he says of Bakelite Radio’s latest collection of soulful originals glued together with like-hearted obscurities. "To me it’s timeless music. It comes from when records were king. That was the big game. It wasn’t sport or TV or DVD. Music was the one thing that could lift you up."

None of these songs are particularly old: the rocking-chair spring of Bap Kennedy’s "Moonlight Kiss", Guy Davis’s gambolling "Sugarbelle Blue" and the slow cruise of Greg Brown’s "Blue Car" have only been breathing for five years. There’s hardly more dust on the cowboy boots of Pee Wee King’s "You Belong To Me"; the slow funk of John Lee Hooker’s "Homework" or Curtis Mayfield’s beautifully restrained song of salvation, "Right On In The Darkness". It’s just the feeling that hails from a time when good songs came on 78rpm bakelite. And that goes equally for the full hand of Joe Camilleri/ Nick Smith grooves that hold up the other half of Volume III. "I always wanted to have another crack at ‘Mystery Ship’ and ‘Hell Cat Blues’," Joe says. "I’m fond of ‘Brother Moses and Sister May’ too, I think that’s a really good song. ‘Wishing Well’ is another one. I know how to do it better, now," he adds with a smile. "But this is a really good demo." Them’s the breaks.

Like Volume II before it, this record made its own bed between a handful of guys in a room: chiefly Joe, Claude Carranza, Simon Starr and Ed Bates, but backed by the keen hands and voices of half a dozen others.

"It’s blind faith, really," Joe says. "I might play the song once, for feeling, but I put a time limit on everything. It’s not jazz, but it’s a jazz concept – it’s about trying to find something within a song, and then accepting what it is. I guide it to some degree, but not to within an inch of its life. That’s how I like it. And I really like it."

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Description

Joe Camilleri's music embraces the heart and soul of R & B bypassing decades of styles and fads and recording methods.

Track Listing

1. Midnight Rain

2. Moonlight Kiss

3. Sugarbelle Blue

4. Ninety Eight Degrees

5. Blue Car

6. Get Hip

7. Sexuality

8. Worlds Away

9. Homework

10. Right on In the Darkness

11. You Belong To Me

12. Comfort Me

13. Hell Cat Blues

14. Brother Moses and Sister May

15. Mystery Ship

16. End of the Line

Click on above buttons to hear samples from select tracks

More info & Reviews

Exactly what’s happening between the grooves of this disc, Joe Camilleri can’t or won’t say. Listen, though, and it’s as close and as real as your pulse. There’s a warmth, an intimacy, an ardour that seems to bypass decades of styles and fads and recording methods to embrace the heart and soul of R&B. That’s Rhythm and Blues, if you came in late. The meaning has changed a few times, but never for Joe, regardless of whether he’s steering Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, the Black Sorrows or Bakelite Radio. As the world gets slicker at programming click tracks and loading sound files, here’s one guy still kicking back, counting in and cutting sides. With Volume III, he’s never sounded more intoxicated by the pure spirit of music; never sounded closer to home.

"It’s old fashioned music, played in an old fashioned kinda away," he says of Bakelite Radio’s latest collection of soulful originals glued together with like-hearted obscurities. "To me it’s timeless music. It comes from when records were king. That was the big game. It wasn’t sport or TV or DVD. Music was the one thing that could lift you up."

None of these songs are particularly old: the rocking-chair spring of Bap Kennedy’s "Moonlight Kiss", Guy Davis’s gambolling "Sugarbelle Blue" and the slow cruise of Greg Brown’s "Blue Car" have only been breathing for five years. There’s hardly more dust on the cowboy boots of Pee Wee King’s "You Belong To Me"; the slow funk of John Lee Hooker’s "Homework" or Curtis Mayfield’s beautifully restrained song of salvation, "Right On In The Darkness". It’s just the feeling that hails from a time when good songs came on 78rpm bakelite. And that goes equally for the full hand of Joe Camilleri/ Nick Smith grooves that hold up the other half of Volume III. "I always wanted to have another crack at ‘Mystery Ship’ and ‘Hell Cat Blues’," Joe says. "I’m fond of ‘Brother Moses and Sister May’ too, I think that’s a really good song. ‘Wishing Well’ is another one. I know how to do it better, now," he adds with a smile. "But this is a really good demo." Them’s the breaks.

Like Volume II before it, this record made its own bed between a handful of guys in a room: chiefly Joe, Claude Carranza, Simon Starr and Ed Bates, but backed by the keen hands and voices of half a dozen others.

"It’s blind faith, really," Joe says. "I might play the song once, for feeling, but I put a time limit on everything. It’s not jazz, but it’s a jazz concept – it’s about trying to find something within a song, and then accepting what it is. I guide it to some degree, but not to within an inch of its life. That’s how I like it. And I really like it."